Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds.
And Donald Trump is melting down claiming Vice President Harris's real crowd sizes are AI and fake. Really keeping it together over there at bar Lago, we have such a great show for you today. The New Republic's Edith Olmstead stops by to tell us how Elon Musk Super Pac is fucking with voter registration. Then we'll talk to author David Dally about his new book Anti Democratic inside the
Far rights fifty year plot to control American elections. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the Week of Project's own, Rick Wilson.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, the One, the Only Rock Wilson.
Good morning, Molly.
I'm hoping today we can spend some time considering why the national media goes to interview a fucking lunatic who stands on stage screaming like a guy behind the gas station who's trying to suck the alcohol out of a sock full of Sterno, and treats him like he's a human being.
Let's not cast his versions on Sterno.
Some of the best alcoholics I know have drank stern out.
I personally have never drank.
It, but as a actually, never mind, we have time for this conversation.
Show. Come see us in California.
We are doing a live show, y'all.
And if you don't come and watch us in this live show, you are missing. Like when Molly and I are on a podcast together, as we've done now for off and on.
For four years, our whole lives well seemingly forever.
When Molly and I are together on a podcast, you guys can see the sort of like banter chemistry we get when we are sitting together in a room, whether it's in a Starbucks or on a stage with a thousand people in the audience, it's a totally different vibe. And by totally different, I mean awesome.
Oh yes, and we.
Also, more importantly, we make fun of each other. Yes, we do audience questions. But let's just get back to this press Offerts. So you and I talk I think on Wednesday, either on the podcast or in real life.
I think it was actually a real life phone call.
I think it was. Yeah, yeah, we.
Were talking about like what we thought it might be because I remember twenty sixteen. And in twenty sixteen, Trump did something which he no longer does, but he would have these press conferences where he'd have a piece of evidence quote unquote.
And it would be like, either, here are.
Women Bill Quinton slip with, here are my taxes from nineteen eighty two?
Maybe right? Remember those piles.
Of maybe right.
So I've seen Trump do those press conferences, so part of me thought like always going to have like five swift body guys who are going to swift boat Tim Walls, and they're going to say, you know, and the media's going to be like, well did this you know whatever?
Trump accused?
Right, Trump accuses you know, forty year veteran of you know whatever. But Carrie had three purple hearts. I mean, it wasn't like he was some adult.
There was a world, a time in the deminiscent past where Chris Osavita and Rick Wilson were the two guys you called to do like really stinky shit. They're really like they're really like bad stuff. And I gotta tell you the swift Boat hit. Look, he was in theater, he was on the boat, he got hurt. I mean,
the standard of the purple heart is one thing. But this thing tried to make Tim Walls and say that a twenty five year veteran who put in his retirement papers ten and a half months before his unit even had the idea they were going to go to Iraq.
He decided to run for Congress because of George W.
Bush, because of the war in Iraq.
This story is not going to help Donald Trump in the end. And I'll tell you why. Bone Spurs Colonel Bone Spurs Von pussy Grabber, the hero of the Battle of Studio fifty four, wounded in the dick in the storming of Turtle Bay. No, this guy is the lowest, the lowest, most shitty human being to ever walk the earth. He has contempt for soldiers. He insulted the family of soldiers repeatedly. John Kelly, John McCain, he insulted a family
one time in Arlington. He calls soldiers suckers and losers, and as many times as they breathless each you remember story of that.
He fucking said it and he thinks it right.
No, no, no question.
And also Adam Kinzinger, I think, had a really good point about this. You'll remember Adam Kinzinger, who used to be in the Republican Party until he dare across the Orange God. He said, in fact, that you know, once you're arguing about military service, you're losing. Like the appropriate response to both Vans and Walls is that they both serve.
There are more pictures of Tim Waltz in uniform over the decades than there are of Donald Trump as president. And honestly, the depth of the perversity of this attack really actually tells you something super interesting about not only Trump but Chris Losovita, who is running Trump's operation, is that these guys only have one song to sing, they only have one note to play. They're not good at the when it gets out of their little comfort.
Zone, right, And that brings us to the Trump presser, where Trump did exactly what he has been doing since twenty sixteen, which was a mashup of the greatest hits, slightly tweaked but not very much.
Not far.
I mean, it's always the you know, the apocalypse is coming and I'm the only person who can save you. If you don't vote for me, it will have a great depression and the Mexicans will flood your street with taco trucks.
Yes, on every corner.
And force you to eat delicious tacos.
Right exactly.
But the thing that I thought was interesting was in twenty sixteen, one of the things that really helped Trump was division in the Democratic Party. For sure was Bernie should have gotten it, and that was one of his favorite refrains.
And so what he's trying to do this time.
I saw a piece where the author said, actually, what he's trying to do is he can't get over Biden being out of the race.
I don't agree.
I think he hopes that he can get the Biden stands to fight with the Harris group and to get division.
May I point out for our friend Donald Trump, ain't gonna happen.
Yeah, well, I mean and remember historically, like when LBJ decided not to run again, he was slow to endorse his vice president, correct, and that did help the Republican And one of the things that Biden immediately did was that he was quick to endorse Harris. And his message has been this entire time, if you want to honor me, elect her, and his campaign has seamlessly become her campaign.
Without even a hiccup, without even a speed bump. It turned into her campaign overnight. Everybody swallowed any and look, I'm sure. Look, all human beings have resentments and but hurt and all this other stuff in your life. Fine, but you know what, none of them are displaying it or acting out on it. You're not hearing her campaign being full of leaks of people go I would have done this because I'm a genius and they're dumb. All of it is rolling together very smoothly. All of it
is coming together very well. They have had a whole series of terrific events across Michigan, Wisconsin. Everything's working great. And the people that are complaining are not her fellow Democrats and not Biden stands. And there are Biden stands. I count myself among them. Look, I think he's one of the best presidents.
I think one of the best presidents.
We've had, no doubt about it. I mean, look, and I think we will have in our lifetimes two underappreciated, one termer presidents, and I think it'll be Joe Biden and hw Bush.
Well will agree to agree.
Yeah, well, you can disagree with me on that.
But you know what, we didn't go to Iraq with my boss. I'm gonna stand George HW Bush till I'm dead.
I'll be the last one.
We're hitting the rocks here.
But if you know the tour sells out, I'll buy you one of his terrible.
I'm talking about hw my boss Jesus Christ woman.
But to celebrate either way, I'm buying you one of his son's terrible baintings.
That sounds good. You know what I do have rolled up in a tube.
I have a black velvet Dick Cheney painting from Tijuana.
Oh no, oh, yeah, that's a terrible thing. That's like they find that's what your heirs. Fine, nobody wants this. Maybe you can get Dick to sign it.
The old man I might be able to. I needed to get on that.
So another thing we need to talk about is a helicopter story, because his story about how he was in a rough helicopter landing with Willie Brown, and Willie Brown said lots of bad things about Kamala Harris during this helicopter story.
None of.
He's just I mean, I guess Willy Brown reminded us of the fundamental truth of Donald Trump is he's always full of shit. Yes, Brown's like he's making that ship up right.
Anything bad.
He was in a helicopter not with Willie Brown, but instead with Jerry Brown Samson.
Not even a.
Little bit Jerry Brown, progressive governor of California, Willie Brown involved in San Francisco politics.
Former mayor of San Francisco, former Speaker of the California Assembly.
Right, neither not, neither are the same person. And Newsom, who was in that helicopter with Jerry Brown and Trump in January twenty nineteen, said it's not even true. There was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris says Jerry Brown not to be confused with Willy Brown. No one has ever confused him, nor will they ever. And Newsom said, I call complete bs as.
One would because because as you may have figured out once again, Donald Trump is always lying.
Donald Trump is never not lying. It's always a lie.
Let's talk about Laurence, who is a friend, Yes, of course, yes, and who did really, really, really important monologue last night where he talked about are we doing it wrong again?
Yes, let's talk about it, because I think since last night I've watched it four.
Times that hour that I will never get back of my life.
No, I'm talking about Lawrence's recapitulation of it, because honestly,
No.
that was a press conference that, as amusing as it was to watch Trump display all of his pathologies and his insanity on television, Lawrence is right. Those reporters, they're in that room. First off, they were a handpick group. Let's be real about that.
Which I think is really important because Harris does not have a handpicked group travel whether she just has the she has the pool, which is different, an important difference.
Yeah, very important difference.
So a handful of reporters, including a lot of the usual suspects that Trump you know, calls it to in the morning. And I'm not saying they're bad reporters, by the way, I'm just saying they are the ones Trump likes to talk to.
Okay, right, right right, It's important to remember.
Yeah, he has a comfort zone with those folks, and he also knows that they're going to play by the rules. You're going to ask journalistic questions like journalists. But because he's hacked the system, he understands he can play fuck around here and he does. And so what do you have. You have Donald Trump up on the stage, chewing up the scenery from the very first few minutes. All my friends on Wall Street, my many, many, many friends on Wall Street, tell me if you let Kamala, It's Great
Depression Part two, And no one says, right, who who? Exactly? What do you mean exactly? What is a great? What is a depression?
Donald?
When do you think it will happen? What do you think will cause it? Because you could tell this was Donald flailing and desperately grasping to be in the spotlight. He wanted to change the narrative, and his own people did not want him. Hey boy, I'll brick little news. His own people did not want him to do this.
They tried to stop him, but the reporters were already on their way to mar A Lago, and when he heard they were coming down for a staff briefing, he sees on this like a wolverine on a piece of rum meat. And he wanted to do the Trump Show because he believes the Trump Show is his most effective form of communication.
Yes, but he's wrong.
I mean the cool right is that he actually he's he's like like so many narcissists, obsessed with his mistakes. And in twenty sixteen, the Trump Show was covered in a very incredulous you know, it was like, oh my god, he's saying something racist. And now it's like, yes, he's saying something racist. Now I agree. If you don't fact check him live, he wins.
Right, and all the networks took at wall to wall, and Jason Miller was bragging about it to reporters last night and bragging about it to reporters this morning, and bragging about it on social media this morning. No one else can do this, No one else gets well to wall coverage with no interruptions, and and he was correct.
The newsworthiness and the clickworthiness and the eyeball worthiness of a Trump presser is regretfully never balanced against the corrosive damage that putting him out there without fact checking, without a single moment of context does to this country is unspeakable. They should not get away with this idea that there's no cultural, political national cost to Donald Trump being on stage saying things that are objectively untrue.
So let's talk about Trump's exchange on methapristone, because I think that's an important moment.
I think that, by the way, and the Florida abortion amendment.
Yeah, that question was a good question too, where somebody as he clearly has no idea.
What is going on. He said maybe I'll vote for it. He's not going to say maybe.
I'll have a press conference announcing my vote.
I mean, by the way, if Joe Biden had ever said maybe I'll have a press conference to announce my vote on a constitutional amendment November, every person in the fucking world would.
Be like, what the fuck is this? Yeah?
Okay, So Haig says, there are other things a federal government can do, not just a band. Would you direct your FDA, for example, to revoke access to methapristone. By the way, this is in itself a completely insane thing, right, a president revoking access to a drug that has been on the market since nineteen eighty one.
I was gonna say, it's been a proof for almost fifty fucking years.
Yeah, not quite fifty years, right, but you know many years you could do this that will be would be supplemental, absolutely, and those things are pretty open and humane. Okay, that doesn't make any sense. But there was a brief period when Trump wasn't in the spotlight, and I now go back to reading his quotes and they don't make any sense.
Again.
I remember, I remember like, oh, this is how this guy talks. But you have to be able to have a vote. And all I want to do is give everybody a vote. And the votes are taking place right now as we speak.
And what he's talking about is giving the states the power to completely ban mifipristone.
Right, Is that something you would consider, Garrett says, And Trump says, there are many things on a humane basis that you can do outside of that, but you also have to give a vote. And the people are going to say that. I mean, okay, don't know what the fuck that means, but I think it means he's open to banning mathaprostone.
That's what he means.
Trump sees that idea of returning this question to the states as an escape hatch for him personally. Okay, he sees it as a way to get out of the moral culpability for what Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, and a whole bunch of other states will do under the power that this Supreme Court will give them, because if they know how this Court rules on things in the abortion and female autonomy family of decisions.
He knows that, and so he thinks I can be the good guy here. A little bit.
I can pretend I'm not really for it, and I can sort of kind of wink and nod about it. And no, he doesn't get to do that, I'm sorry. And when he was asked about the Florida ballot initiative, which is why Florida is flashing let's say it's flashing yellow now for the Trump campaign. Which is why Florida is flashing yellow for them, because there's a choice ballot initiative on the and it's got the approval right now of over seventy four percent of Florida voters, including fifty
two percent of Republicans, and he's scared of that. So he's trying to say, um, I mean I could, or maybe I kind of sort of my own right exactly.
So I think that's where we are, and I think that we're going to see more of that.
Of course, Trump being a complete lunatic.
Here's the thing. The rules of the both sides world should mean that they should be covering wal to wall every minute of Vice President Harris's speeches. Yes, they should be covering them without interruption. Because Trump did not really do Q and A yesterday. Let's be very clear about what he really did yesterday. He went out there and did as everyone said, she goes, this is not festive as season. And yet that was the airing of the grievances.
He just went out there and aired the fucking grievances. He wasn't really answering questions. And they also every reporter there knew that underneath this is not the campaign headline that was written in most of their papers today. A lot of their papers today wrote like Trump and fiery presser challenges Harris to blah blah blah. No, they know, they know, and he knows, and Jason Miller knows, and
Chris and Susy know. All the people around Trump know that if they can get reporters back into the frame where they're just mechanically reporting the shit, Trump says that some fraction of Americans will believe it. I'm not asking them to pick sides. I'm not asking them to do anything. It's not legitimate journalism.
We're just asking them not to let him repeat the lie on chat.
Yes, that's exactly what it is, Molly.
I'm asking them not to be a part of the lie factory of Donald Trump.
Exactly.
We have even more toward dates for you did you know the linked projects. Rick Wilson have Fast Politics, Malli jug Faster are heading out on tour to bring you a night of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty seventh at the Regent Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest and we'll be at the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty first of September, and on the twenty second we'll
be in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October, we'll be in affiliate City Winery, and then DC on the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth of October at City Winery. If you need to laugh as we get through this election and hopefully never hear from a guy who lives in a golf club again,
we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests to help you laugh instead of cry your way through this election. Season and give you the inside analysis of what's really going on right now. Buy your tickets now by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics as Unusual dot bio. Edith Olmsted is an associate writer at The New Republic.
Welcome to Fast Politics by Mollie.
I'm so happy to be here.
This is such an interesting and disturbing story that when we saw it.
We were like, oh fuck, we have to get her on here.
Explain to us a little bit about what Elon Musk is planning to do with elections.
So, Elon Musk has started a pack called the America Pack, and we know this because he told Jordan Peterson about it last month when he was trying to dispel rumors that he was going to donate forty five million dollars to Trump every month.
Can you just.
Stop for one second and explain to me Key's saying he never planned to do it. But is he telling the truth now? That is a really good question. I actually don't know. The Wall Street Journal published that he was intending to and I find it hard to believe that they would publish it if it were not, at
least at one point the case. But he has since sort of dispelled that reporting, and I think it is important he's like done this very trumpy thing, which is that's right, it wasn't the Wall Street Journal piece about him. The Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murnoch but has very very high standards for things they published.
They're like a real newspaper. So it is interesting to me that you.
Have instead of like saying, well, I used to think that, but I no longer do, or I was going to, but I changed my mind. Instead, Elon does this trumpy thing of saying I never said that.
Absolutely, it's incredibly trumpy, and he has only gotten Trump years since. He has sort of fully endorsed Trump in the wake of I think it was his shooting that sort of inspired Musk to take this intense turn. But now he started the America Pack, which is a specific kind of pack. It's a canvassing pack, which means that I can work side by side with the Trump campaign
to do canvassing around the country. And this is particularly important right now because Trump's ground game is, you know, a little bit lacking at the current moment.
That's right.
They just don't have the sort of grassroots enthusiasm or support that we're sort of seeing on the Democrats side, Like even Trump's allies are talking about it, and I think there's a piece in the Washington Post this morning that was all about that. So this is a big
part of his campaign that actually needs bolstering. And so as a result, Musk has started this pack and he had all these digital ads right and they had pictures of Trump being shot, sort of trying to evoke this emotional experience in a viewer, trying to get them to register to vote, specifically registered to vote was something that all of these ads are pushing, and they're pushing it off on the main website too. When you go to the America pack website, there was an option, not anymore,
but there was an option to register to vote. And in some states you could register to vote. It would take you to a page and you would enter your information, like where you're from, and it would direct you to a page which would actually take you to a site where you could register to vote. But crucially, in some
key battleground state this was not the case. You would get redirected to another page which would ask you for your age, your name, your address, a lot of personal information and then Once you had entered all that, it would just pop up a little thing saying thank you, but it would never actually read you to a page where you could register to vote, and it certainly didn't
enter the information into any registries. So essentially the ads were asking people to register to vote, but not actually giving them the opportunity.
Right. But it was for Trump's supporters.
Right, I think it was supposed to be directed at swing voters in battleground states who were theoretically, like Musk, caught up in the like whirlwind of energy that happened after Trump's attempted assassination that could be motivated to take political action after that event. I don't necessarily think it was for his base, or maybe it was, but I don't know what amount of his base is actually not registered to vote.
Right, right, Right, that's a good point.
So what other stuff have you seen that Elon is doing to support Trump and trump Ism? And also do we know how much money he put into this pack?
Yes?
Overall, I'm actually not sure how much money. But must America packboard eight hundred thousand dollars into digital advertisements to target voters just in the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to ad Impact.
Okay, so that is.
A lot of ad money, though it's not forty five million.
Dollars a month.
No, certainly it is not. They also had a contract for fifteen million dollars with a canvassing service that was going to send people around the country to canvas for them, but that contract actually got canceled, and it's kind of unclear what's going to happen with the money that they poured into that.
Okay, but Mosk is the owner of Twitter, which is now called as What kind of abilities does he have to sort of target X users with ads? I mean, can you do that? Has he decided to put ads on AX? Do we know that our data is safe? Is there anything to prevent him from just like going hog wild with it?
That's a great question. It seems to me that I haven't seen any America PEX on X, which is my only indication. But I'm in New York, so it's sort of like, why would I see an ad for it? Most of the ads that I read about were seen on Google, like in a response to the Google searches,
So I think it's likely that this information. We know that when Musk is collecting information under the banner of the America pack as opposed to under the banner of the CEO of X, that information can be filtered straight into canvassing projects with the Trump campaign. So I feel like because of FEC guidelines, they're able to coordinate in a much more like legal way as opposed to Trump's dealing our information and then giving it to Trump anyway.
But I actually am not sure about him taking information from X and giving it. I feel like maybe the information on X isn't as willfully given, and if it is willfully given, it's likely incomplete right, right, right, That.
Would make a lot of sense. So Musk has X, he has all this data. We don't know if he's using it for Trump's benefit. Like, we don't have any algorithmic transparency, so we don't know how much Elon is messing with what we see or how we see it, do.
We We certainly don't. End I know less about the inner workings of X, to be honest, right, But no, But he does exactly, which is pretty concerning for a guy who is ramping up his power in this upcoming election, because it seems like he certainly has expressed his political stake in what's going on, but we don't know what exactly his means are to making his plan come to life. But he's certainly getting a lot of media attention, but also like he's getting funded by like some of the
richest guys in Silicon valleys. So it's truly disturbing the like reach that he has.
Can you talk about some of the like there was sort of a weekend when a lot of these Silicon Valley types who weren't necessarily all in on the Trump train decided, and it was after Trump had been shot, and one after another, a bunch of them came out and this is all in crowd, et cetera. And these are the people who likely had some influence in Trump picking Jdie Van So who knows this crew has been very trumpy and very committed to Trump. But are they
still It certainly seems so to me. What it feels like is like the sort of frenzy around Trump is a little bit waning, but their wallets are still open to him, as it kind of seems because you have people like well, obviously Peter Teel, who is pretty much all in non Trump. But you also have people like Joe Lonsdale, who's one of the co founders of Talenteer.
He donated a million dollars to the America pack and he's like obviously buddies with Peal because they both created Palenteer together, and the Winkleby are both in I forgot about them. Oh, how horrifying. Also like just regular I'm not regular venture capitalist right, because there are some more supporting Harris, so as a Max Well, the other Palenteer guy who is sort of a grievous warhawk, Alex Carr.
I have a personal pet, interesting palent Heer. I just think it's really like anytime something scares me and I don't understand it, I like become obsessed with it. And so that's kind of what's happened with me and Valenteer.
But Alex Kark has said that he's supporting Harris, which is very interesting based on his of general warmongereness at being the head of a military contractor in all right, right, can you talk to us about there's some evidence that Eric and Don Junior are getting involved in a bitcoin launch.
Can you explain to us there seems like Trump world has gotten very tight with cryptocurrency, and I mean that would make a lot of sense because they're both like kind of sketchy. Can you talk about that.
There's actually been a lot of like, yeah, Donald Trump Junior promised that there would be some huge crypto announcement coming up, which I think that Trump and Harris are finding themselves in this place where they're sort of battling over or Harris at least has tried to see more competitive about being pro crypto.
Right than Biden.
Yes, and Trump has definitely made it clear that he is cozying up to all these sort of bitcoin guys.
He wants bitcoins to be produced in the United States, even though I think there was a really horrifying article in the Time a couple of weeks ago about this town in Texas where they're producing bitcoins and everyone around them was getting slowly poisoned, which maybe is worth back checking me on, but I'm pretty sure so he sees it as an economic opportunity for the United States, and I definitely thinks being pushed by his sons, who are the same guys obviously who are pushing for JD Vance.
This is all part of like a sort of new right economic populism model that these guys have been pushing, where they want to bring manufacturing into the United States no matter what the cost to I guess like the world economy and also human life would be.
Yeah.
One of the tensions I think in the Trump campaign is how much of Trump's money is going to the campaign and how much is going to his many lego bells and his members of his family who work for the campaign, right right.
He's definitely cashed in or like Bond, further in on having the sort of Trump coin and stuff than Biden obviously, who was totally gave regulation. I guess I don't know very much about his whole cryptocurrency gamble that he's making.
But he definitely wants those donors.
Right, like the same kind of like Cronius that he is really interested in capturing in the whole JD bad situation.
Right, And that I think is really an important data point. So one of the things that is going on right now is that Vance is following Harris and Walls around while they campaign and doing press conferences, et cetera. It seems like wildly a normal to me, But is there some precedent for this?
I was wondering the same thing. It seems sort of depressing or sad, especially because seems to be following them everywhere they go, but doing a really small event just in the same city, which well, there's a lot here actually, And it's really interesting to me that Trump has sort of been staying put all week. He's been in Florida doing fundraising and interviews. He's going to have a press
conference later today. But I think that Trump has gotten so used to his sort of non campaign style of campaigning against Joe Biden, where he doesn't realize the amount of effort it's going to take to actually motivate voters in these states. He doesn't know how to campaign anymore. He's got a lot of support obviously, but he doesn't have the stamina, I guess. I mean that's kind of how it seems. It seems like Trump has lost a
little bit of his stamina. And I think that just goes to speak to well, it goes to speak to a lot of things, but including that Trump's ground game. It's not that he doesn't have a ground game because of like a mistake, it's because he doesn't value these campaign events. It's because he doesn't think he needs to go out and get the vote, because Trump's plan has ever lied in getting the vote, it lies in fomenting claims of voter fraud. And I think ultimately that's going
to be his play in November. So I think he knows he and Vance know with these like depressing little rallies where Vance is giving the most hostile, awkward answers, that like, it doesn't really matter what you do, you just have to create the appearance that you are doing something. But I'm not aware of any precedent where Vance would be for whatever reason, It's like he's trailing them. It's so weird, right exactly.
I don't white understand how this helps.
Right, I mean that I feel like that is what I don't totally get.
I think it helps if you want Vance to be a little gadfly who warms around Paris and Waltz and just it's sort of there to be a foil to them, But strategically it doesn't make tons of sense to me, right.
I think Trump feels that he has a better relationship with the mainstream media than he does and that maybe perhaps this will somehow appeal to journalists.
Oh, because of the whole she's not taking questions thing.
Right, and I'm your buddy, buddy, and I'm gonna go around.
Et cetera, et cetera.
I totally see how that could be Trump's play, but unfortunately he picked Advance, who seems like somewhat allergic to being personable on camera, which is crazy because I know that's why he was selected. It almost makes no sense in that way, Like even when he gets like softball questions, like he got a question yesterday where somebody was like, what makes you smile?
And he answered me.
So angrily, suck.
It was like, it makes me smile when you guys are stupid jerks, And it's like, why would you answer that, Like why wouldn't you say you're wife or your three kids that you're supposedly so obsessed with, like instead, he just is so strange.
It was.
It was an incredible moment, I thought when he said that, And then also he said like a journalist asked him another softball question, which was people like to have beers with people in Wisconsin?
Why would people want have a beer with you? And he was like, because I love to.
Drink, which again, like I'm sober since I was nineteen, so you know, but I would think that like the correct answer to that would be like because I love football or something and apple pie and hanging out with other people. But this, again, is this Desanti's vein of Trump is who want to use anger, but he can't quite figure out the way to do it the way that Trump was able to use anger in an affable way, and these guys use it in a scale.
I totally agree. I think that something that's really present in Bance as the president, desantists it's like simmering resentment, and we're seeing it directed a lot at sort of the media that's following him around. It's an unintended consequence, like if they thought that this was going to make the media happy. The media doesn't want to be snapped at every day, especially when they're like throwing you softballs
about nothing. Like the beer question was so crazy because he was like, I actually do like beer, as like implying that as opposed to the Libs who hate beer, Like what kind of nonsense is that?
It was a very weird answer to a very weird question to very strange Thank you so much.
I hope you will come back.
Oh absolutely, I'm really really happy that you asked me, and I'm a big listener. My mom is a huge slip as thank you.
Yeah.
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David Day is the author of Anti Democratic Inside the Far Rights fifty year Plot to Control American elections.
Welcome to Fast Politics, David, Thank you for having me tell me the story of your book and explain to us why.
You wrote it.
This is a book about how an anti democracy faction has hijacked the Supreme Court and the Judiciary capturing and corrupting much of our politics and policy. The justices who have made it harder for people of color to vote to have handed Donald Trump immunity from prosecution for committing crimes while in office, have taken away reproductive freedoms that abortion rights. They owe their seats on this court to a fifty year dark money project that the right has
been working on now for decades. It's an anti democratic project because these are people who are fully aware that their agenda is not supported by the majority of Americans, that they cannot achieve it through democratic means, and so reactionaries like Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, they have relied on the ideological allies that they placed on this court to advance the economic, social, and political interests of a narrow and wealthy and radical elite.
Yeah, I think that's right. So tell us where this starts.
I start this story back in the early nineteen seventies, as conservatives realize that the Warren Court has been expanding rights, that the Warren Court has been embracing the full multi racial spirit of the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution and there is a lawyer in Virginia. His name is Lewis Powell.
And Lewis Powell writes a memo for the Chamber of Commerce, and he says, Guys, the consumer movement, the civil rights movement, the anti Vietnam movement, the environmental movement, they are attacking big business. They are changing America, and we have to fight back. And Powell says that the plutocrats and big business has got to get involved and to fight for the courts. He says, this is the area of opportunity
if big business will invest in it. About six months later, Richard Nixon appoints Lewis Powell himself to the US Supreme Court, where he then is part of a handful of very important decisions in the seventies and nineteen eighties that help gut campaign finance reform, that help as well erode of voting rights. These are the decisions that lead to Citizens United, that inspire a young John Roberts on his lifelong crusade against voting rights. But I also find another memo. A
lot of people know about the Powell memo. What I also uncovered was the roots of the Federalist Society, written by a man named Michael Horowitz who writes about seven or eight years after Powell to the Scafe Foundation, one of the big right wing conservative billionaire foundations. And what Horowitz has to say is that Powell has some good ideas.
He created a lot of conservative architecture, that the Koch Brothers invest in, Heritage Foundation, things like that, But he says, we haven't done enough to try to win the hearts and minds of a future generation. And so what Horowitz says has to be done is the conservative legal movement needs to move into law schools and attract the next generation. And it's Horowitz who connects the young founders of a group called the Federalist Society to all of these big
right wing donors. And it's Horowitz who then, as the chief of staff for Reagan's Office of Management and Budget in the nineteen eighties, who helps bring all of these
young Federalist Society conservatives into the administration. They begin to populate DOJ that the Department of Justice, which becomes sort of the intellectual hothouse of this young Federalist Society set, especially under ed Meese, you have folks involved in the process of picking judges, of creating originalism, not as a theory of constitutional interpretation, but as a way for conservatives to win policy. Originalism is sort of a trojan horse as a way to get victories that would not have
been one otherwise. And the war on the Voting Rights Act, which John Roberts and his allies fight from the Department of Justice.
Let's talk about the war on the Voting Rights Act, because so much of this anti democracy stuff started with an attack unvoting rights and making it harder for people to vote.
Explain and does where that figures into.
This, It's very prominent. I think it's at the very heart of so much of the anti democratic spirit and the minority rule that grips our politics right now. I think, in many ways, the most important case and one of the most disastrous cases that the Supreme Court has decided. I know it's a long list recent years, but it's going back to twenty thirteen in the Shelby County versus
Older case that really eviscerated the Voting Rights Act. When Congress passes the Voting Rights Act, they include somely called preclearance, which forces the states that had the worst records on race and voting to run any change that they wanted
to make past the Department of Justice. This was a big deal, but it was passed for a big reason because for one hundred years prior to the passage of the Voting Rights Act and still afterwards, there were states that engaged in absolute insidious and devious and violent and evil ways to get around the Reconstruction Amendment with pall
taxes and literacy tests and violence at the polls. And so Congress knew what it was doing when it included preclearance, and the courts backed it up time and time again. In two thousand and six, when Congress reauthorizes the Voting Rights Act, and it's nearly unanimous. It's three hundred and ninety to thirty three in the House and it's ninety eight to nothing in the Senate, signed into law by President George W.
Bush.
But there's this sneaky undercurrent that's going on within the Federalists society, within the conservative legal movement to try to undercut this, not through the political process, but to use
their advantages in the courts. And so the Shelby County case, Roberts effectively decides that, well, things have changed in the South, and he bases this really on vibes, not on the sixty thousand paget that Congress generates, not on the nearly unanimous bipartisan vote, not on the decades and dozens of hearings that have been conducted across the South on why preclearance is still essential, how it has stopped and prevented and cured all kinds of nefarious schemes to this day,
including elections across the South that would just be canceled when it appeared that a black politician might win them. There's an election in Mississippi in two thousand and one, a mayor's race that is just canceled. This isn't happening in nineteen fifty five or in nineteen sixty two. It's happening in two thousand and one, right in the middle of our electimes, right around the times that you know, planes strike the Twin Towers. So this is modern history.
This is just a few years before the Chief Justice says, well, you know, I think things have changed, and by ending preclearance, what he does is unleash all of these dark forces to really just run free. Preclarance was the prison guard, and as soon as the prison guards took wigh. What you see across the states that Republicans had gerrymandered is just an onslaught of voter ID bills and precinct closures and new laws that create longer lines in areas where
Republicans don't want people to vote. And let's face it, all of these state legislative maps also had had to be precleared. So the kinds of laws that are being passed in state legislatures around the country right now on reproductive rights, on teaching black history and schools, on so many other things. The extreme legislation coming out of the
right in Texas and Florida and Alabama and Georgia. All of this happening in states that had been covered by preclearance that these maps would have had to have been precleared. Now they don't have to be. This is the consequence we are living in that America.
Yeah, I think so much in this post Row America about what it's.
Like to lose rights you have.
And I feel like the Jim Crow laws in the South were sort of the template for what they're doing now with voting.
I think that's right in a lot of ways, because what you see after the Civil War Congress passes the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, and to me, these reconstruction amendments really represent the best articulation of America's founding vision and ideals. Those amendments are US at our absolute best, ensuring equal protection, ensuring one person, one vote, ensuring citizenship
and a voice for everyone. But those amendments, even though states across the South had to ratify them as a condition for re entering the Union, they didn't last very long. The Supreme Court, in a series of cases in the eighteen sixties and the eighteen seventies, really began picking away at those amendments and in many ways nullifying them because they made it impossible for the federal government to enforce
those amendments in states. They said that would be an encroachment on states' rights, and so many of those states across the South, unsurprisingly simply did not enforce them. And then the courts also said, in an echo of what we see from the Roberts Court, they say, well, the Civil War was a long time ago, that was a decade ago. We're past that now. When we finally move on and stop treating people differently, we ought to be
treating everyone the same. And that's the same rationale that is being used now as soon as the Court limits enforcement, just as the Court limited enforcement in twenty thirteen. What you begin all of these new state constitutions across the South, in Mississippi, in Alabama, and they enshrine white supremacy. If you go back look at the documents, if you go back and look at the actual transcripts of these things, they say very clearly, what we are doing here is
enshrining white supremacy. And they come up with all kinds of schemes. The white primary or at large districts, literacy tests have pull texts. When that doesn't prove to be quite enough, then you see lynchings and the kinds of violence that would happen if black citizens dared try to
cast a vote. And this lasts all the way up until the passage of the Voting Rights Act, right, I mean, even the Civil Rights Acts of nineteen fifty seven nineteen fifty nine are not enough to stop this because there
was no real enforcement teeth in there. The Civil Rights Act forces judges in the locality where the complaint is received to fix it, and that simply wasn't going to happen because oftentimes those judges in this album the nineteen fifties were segregationists or pals with the sheriffs, or they would just make it difficult for DOJ to come in and do what they wanted to do. Nineteen sixty one, in Dallas County, Alabama, where Selma is, you had a
one percent of the black population registered to vote. By the time the Voting Rights Act arrives in nineteen sixty five, after victory after victory under the Civil Rights Act, it was still only four percent. So you just didn't see enough of actual progress until preclarance forced it into play. And so when John Roberts says that things have changed in the South, now, nothing has changed in the South. Nothing really has changed dramatically in the South at all.
One hour after the Shelby County decision, Texas enacts it's draconian voter ID bill that the state admits full well is going to stop six hundred thousand Latinos who are citizens and registered to vote from voting because they are demanding specific forms of ID that they've already researched and know that these voters don't have, so it's not that things have changed in the South. Things are the same.
What is no longer the same is that there is no longer a mechanism in place for the federal government to prevent this kind of explicit racism.
Yeah.
Until the MAGA judges joined the court, Roberts was able to kind of make it seem as if he was a centrist, or at least he was not quite as anti voting. And even during this what we've read reported about the Dobbs League, it was reported and again, I mean, it feels like something he might want people to know about him, right, that he was pushing back on overturning Row and Da da da. Then he says he's sort of worked hard to present himself as a moderate.
Is he really a moderate?
No, John Roberts has worked hard to create a myth of himself as an institutional centrist. He's presented himself as an umpire calling balls and strikes, something out of an Indiana John Cougar song. John Roberts is the most successful Republican politician of the last twenty five years. And he has hidden this, and he's masked himself behind this idea of being a centrist and in many ways. The institutional mainstream media and the Supreme Court media has gone along
with this. But Roberts might not be an arsonist the way that the MAGA judges are. Roberts would not burn the house down. He would take it one floor piece of floorboard at a time and just slowly demolish it. Roberts isn't going to bash you over the head to change the law. He's going to the frog and the pot of boiling water and slowly turn it up until the frog no longer notices it's being boiled. And that's what Roberts has done on case after case after case.
What I try to walk through an anti democratic is that Roberts does a two step on all of these cases. You know, if it's the Rocky horror picture show, it's a step to the right and then a jump to
the right. And Citizens United in Shelby County in Common Cause versus Rujoe, which closed the federal courts to partisan gerrymanderin claims what Roberts does is that there's always a case beforehand of these which Roberts takes a small tentative step in that direction and invites the next case in that next case is when he really smashes it down. So he does it slowly, and he often does it with this deep dishonesty and disingenuousness. If you look at
the Shelby County case. The Shelby County case, Roberts decides this, he says on a doctrine of equal sovereignty. He says that there is a tradition in American politics at constitutional law that all states must be treated equally. He fundamentally made this up. There is oh such doctrine. There is an equal footing doctrine that says that states must be admitted to the Union under the same rules. But he
turned this into equal sovereignty. And he did so by cutting out with an ellipsis and just editing away the piece of the law that didn't apply to him and which actually said that he was misusing it, the piece that said that this has nothing to do with voting or any other kinds of rights. He just cut it. If you go back and look at the actual law, it's the exact opposite of what John Roberts says.
It is.
You know, I mean that the US Supreme Court right now has got a really low standing with the American public because people think that they're just partisan actors, and people are right about that. But imagine what would happen if people knew that these guys are just making the law up and editing it as they wish, because as they can, because they can get away with.
It because there's no checks and balances on the Supreme Court.
Yes, this Supreme Court has really become a super legislature. It's become a legislature nine with Leonard Leo and John Roberts having effectively hand picked a super majority. They have no checks and balances, no accountability. They're unelected, they have lifetime appointments, They decide cases in private. They have no ethics code. And until and unless we stand up to this and reform the court, this is the America we're going to be and it's not the America I want
to be in. It's time to stand up and fight for it.
Thank you so much, David.
My pleasure, Molly, thank you for having me.
No moment, Rick Wilson, what is your moment of fuckery?
My moment of fuckery today, Molly is Chris Losovita playing what I call the one note flute. The guy's only got one act. The guy's only got one play, and it's to try to tear down the opponent based on
his patriotism and his military service. Now, look, they're going at walls in a whole bunch of different directions, But the two that I find the most insane are trying to say that a guy that served in the National Guard for twenty four years and who the Minnesota National Guard says he put in his paperwork to retire ten months before that, he is somehow a traitor to the country.
Go fuck yourself, is my answer on that one. That is some weapons grade bullshit, And a lot of their other attacks are falling apart already, Like it turns out the law that he signed doesn't require tampons in boys' bathrooms, which is synth the magas man. They are having all kinds of weird feelings about this one. They're like having all kinds of like conflicted, like don't look at me, I might have a woody feelings about it.
They can't quite sort out their hatreds.
We're getting the pure unadulter, righted Rick Wilson here continue.
You are getting the pure Rick Wilson this morning. I am Liddy MC litt. This entire attack on walls is going to fail, and I'll tell you why, because we talked about it earlier. Every time you want to make that attack, the Democrats shouldn't be playing defense on walls. They should be going right back at Colonel Pussy von bone spurs. And that is the way Democrats, that is the way.
I just said yes to something. Maybe I'm dirty.
I trust me, Molly, trust me Mally. As I've told you, we are uncancellable.
I don't know about that, but yes, I think it's a really good point. And again it's this coverage that don't let Trump say the lion checked, don't let Trump drive the narrative. He is a bad faith actor. And you saw it yesterday when he said I have a debate on Fox News. Right that debate was he wants her to go to Fox News because that's his propaganda arm. And remember at the Black Journalism Association conference we had Harris Faulkner, who wasn't even a member of the association.
So Trump wants his people in there to juice it for him, and don't let him.
Cheat exactly exactly.
And I believe that there's a moral obligation in this thing, and I know a lot of folks in the press.
They react very very badly.
To what they think is lecturing and what they think is hostility towards journalism or media, which I think you and I can safely say that our lives prove that we are not hostile to journalism or media and in fact value it tremendously. But this idea that we're going to let Trump play the same game he played before with a terrifying and terrible consequence to this country is deeply disturbing to me.
Thank you, Rick Wilson any time.
Talk to you later.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.